


You Are Lost, You Can Never Go Home

by Hypocorismm



Series: Watch It Grow, Child of Wolf [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Family Reunions, Gen, Homecoming, Minor Character Death, Sadie is Talia's granddaughter, Sadie is a killer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 04:19:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypocorismm/pseuds/Hypocorismm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It Takes A Village Alternate Ending; Sadie was never brought home and was raised by the Seattle pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Are Lost, You Can Never Go Home

**Author's Note:**

> This ending would pick up after Chapter 28 of It Takes A Village, right after the door closes between Stiles and Sadie. Stiles never discovered that Puppy and Bunny were infected with wolfsbane and mistletoe, and the pack never brought Sadie home.

She caught the familiar scent the first time she went on a hunt with the women of the pack. She was 15, and the nomadic pack was passing through the northern forests of California. It tickled her nose and enticed her but a comforting bump from her pack mate drew her back to the hunt. She dreamt of that scent, dreamt that she followed it through the night, far from her pack to a looming house in the middle of the trees. She dreamt of a pack sprawling throughout the forest, a comforting smile and a pack pile lulling her to sleep. She dreamt that one day, that scent would wrap itself around her and she would be home.

Hopefully it would be a home where she was not harassed daily by her Alpha.

She couldn’t say that his advancement came out of nowhere, the older Alpha had expressed his interest in her several times over the past months but she had expressed her loud disinterest just as frequently. It was against the law to force a mating, to claim without permission, but the Alpha had always thought himself above the law.

As Head Beta, she was obligated to stand beside her Alpha and follow out his orders without question. She was never really good at the _without question_ part, however. She challenged him, challenged his authority. She didn’t really know where the urge to rebel against him came from, she was a good Beta, a good wolf, but sometimes the words that came out of his mouth were just plain stupid.

“You know,” he purred, pressing her into a tree. “You would be even more powerful if you were with me.”

She rolled her eyes, pushing him away.

“We’ve had this discussion, over and over again, Perses. I am not going to be your mate, ever,” she reminded him, shoulders held back and chin titled proudly. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten Head Beta, even though she’d been trained since she was 3 to be the Alpha’s second. She never submitted to him, not like a good Beta should’ve.

“I am your Alpha,” he growled.

“I am still not going to mate you.”

“You should be grateful that I saved your ass from wandering the forest. If hunters had found you, you would’ve been killed on principal. But I saved you. You should kiss my feet!”

“And yet, here I am,” she snarked.

He grabbed her arm, digging his claws in as he yanked her close. His eyes glowed red as his fangs came and his face shifted.

“You will submit to me,” he commanded. She only snorted.

“I will not.”

He pushed them into the trunk of the tree again, his body holding her there.

“You will be mine, Sadie,” he slurred around his fangs, his free hand coming up to grip Sadie’s thick brown hair and yank her head to the side. Her throat was left exposed, bared to the Alpha, his for the taking, for claiming. She whined, the noise high and needy in the back of her throat as she felt her own fangs and claws descend. Out of desperation, she grabbed a fistful of his sandy hair and ripped him away, stumbling back out of surprise more than anything. She snarled, the sound instinctual as he leapt for her. She grabbed him around the throat, digging her own claws into the flesh there and threw him away with all of her strength. He landed on all fours, claws dug into the ground beneath him.

“I belong to no one!”

“We’ll see about that.”

He launched himself at her again, snarls echoing off trees around them but this time, she leapt away and pounced onto his back as soon as he landed. She hooked her legs around his waist and her arms underneath his, before she buried her fingers into his chest, feeling the muscles tear underneath her nails. She pressed her mouth to his ear and growled before biting into the cartilage and ripping it off with more pleasure than anything else. He howled beneath her, throwing himself onto his feet and back into a tree. She let out a gasp as the air rushed out of her, the flesh falling from her mouth and her claws dislodging. He gripped her thighs in his hands and tore at the muscle.

“You will submit,” he stated as her legs released his waist. She ached, blood dripped down her legs and her lungs had never really been a strong point for her anyway, but she was not giving up. She would _not_ submit, and she would _not_ be claimed. Her legs kicked out, sending him stumbling just enough for her to drop into a crouch, poised for attack.

“You really shouldn’t have trained me so well, Perses, if you were going to try and force me to be yours,” she replied as he also crouched.

His response was lost as she sprung at him, roaring loudly. He leapt into her stomach and knocked her off balance onto her back, her head snapping back and baring her throat for a moment. She allowed him a moment of victor’s glee before whipping her head forward and digging her fangs into his throat and tearing away his jugular and windpipe, the fragile structure crunching as her jaw closed. His howl for help was cut off and his body slumped forward, bleeding profusely onto his Beta beneath him.

“Who’s above the law now?” she snarled, shoving his corpse off her, blood drying quickly on her claws and around her mouth. She could feel his power burst to life in her veins as her eyes changed from blue to red. She felt stronger, felt on top of the world.

And then, the panic set in.

The pack wouldn’t accept her.

The pack wouldn’t want her as their Alpha.

She wasn’t fit to be an Alpha.

Was an Alpha without a pack still an Alpha?

She fled, without packing any of her things. She only grabbed the one memento she had from her life before this pack; it was a small matchbox car that had been hidden in the lining of one of her duffels. Everything sentimental the Alpha had thrown out, except for one bag of her clothes and that happened to be the one with her toy in it. When she couldn’t sleep, she would take it from her pillowcase and drive it noiselessly up one of her pack mates’ arm as they slept. She had a vague recollection of a warm, rare smile crossing a stubbly face as she did the same as a kid, before she found her new pack. She’d asked the Alpha about her parents when she was older but he had only said that they had left her in the woods and she had found the pack. Sadie could hear the lie without having to listen to his heart. She remembered a hand in hers, tears dripping from whiskey eyes as he said goodbye.

She tried not to think about those memories too often, because they were vague and only glimpses of that life. She’d been two when the pack had adopted her, and together they’d raised her to be Head Beta. But she still missed the warmth of _parents._

She tucked the toy car into the front pocket of her jeans and shifted into her beta form, not comfortable enough to shift all the way with her new powers. She left the campsite the pack had settled into for the week at a run, sprinting as fast as she could towards the southwest. They had made it as far as Idaho in the past weeks, in a thick forest outside of Boise.

She just hoped she could find that scent from all those years ago. She hadn’t paid attention to where they were on that hunt, just that there was a pack that they were trying to get past without being stopped or caught. _The Hale Pack_ , some of the women had whispered in hushed, reverent tones. She hadn’t asked why they had been so quiet about this topic when no other topic on the planet was sacred. She figured there was bad blood, or that the Hales were werewolf royalty to be feared.

Either way, the Hales might just be the answer to her lifelong quest of not feeling so alone all the damn time.

-&-

She caught the scent again on the outskirts of a town in northern California town called Beacon Hills. She followed it around town, skulking in the shadows to avoid the town’s human population, not that much of the human population was out on the town after midnight. She was covered in blood, although she had no wounds to explain the source, and her skin was so dirt-covered, she couldn’t see any of the freckles or moles that dotted her skin. She toyed with the idea of bathing in a creek she came across when the scent led her into the forest again, the Beacon Hills Natural Preserve a sign had announced. The idea was dashed when she dipped a single toe into the water’s edge and pulled back with a flinch, too cold for bathing. The wind shifted as she went to dip her hands into the creek, and that familiar scent tantalized her from the north, begging her to follow it. She crept onto the rocks and followed the trail, eyes closed as she moved, stepping blindly with the forest.

She stopped at the edge of a clearing, a house bigger than she’d ever seen set in the middle, a handful of cars parked across its front lawn. The bottom floor was lit up, shining in the dark, and figures moved around inside. _The Hale Pack_ , the woman had whispered. Something about _The Hale Pack_ felt familiar, felt like she could just walk in and fall into a couch between two of her pack mates.

Sadie didn’t dare.

She was an Alpha on territory that wasn’t hers, lurking around a pack’s den that also wasn’t hers. Just walking into that house would be suicide.

She stepped into the shadows of the forest and moved around the clearing, circling the house. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she kept at her circling for several minutes as she watched the resident pack continue on with their lives. A few of the pack were cooking dinner, laughing and arguing about how to tell if pasta is fully cooked or not. Another handful were yelling at the television screen in the living room, jumping to their feet as something exciting happened. One lingered in an upstairs bedroom, scratching words into a paper and grumbling about chemistry.

Sadie felt dirty for watching them, and stumbled away from the clearing. Her steps echoed loud in her ears, and the branch that snapped under her foot was the loudest of all. The pack didn’t seem to notice, just continuing to laugh and have fun pack times with each other. She found her way to an abandoned thicket not far from the pack’s house and crawled in, curling into herself against the cold.

She missed her pack’s piles, curling into Sydney and pressing her back into Hana. She missed Meredith’s snuffles against her leg and Tyanne’s hand curling into the back of her shirt from behind Hana. She even strangely missed Perses’ presence, but that was mostly because his presence created a soothing calm over the pack.

She had to be her own pack now, had to make her own piles, and had to create her own layer of calm.

-&-

She continued to watch the pack, normally from the upper branches of the trees surrounding the clearing. One of the members, a man with wild brown hair, thick rimmed glasses and a penchant for pop culture t-shirts stood on the back deck every morning with a cup of coffee, staring out into the forest like he was searching for something he couldn’t find. The wind was sometimes in her favor and would blow his scent towards her where she sat. He smelt of home, of family, of pack, of cuddles on a cold, winter day. Familiar. Safe.

   Another man, a taller, broader man with thick scruff sometimes would join the first, and they’d sit together in the morning air, not saying a word. He smelt of wolf, but not of enemy. The scent coming off him was more like pack, but she figured that was because he was mated with the first man. It was always this man that went inside first, squeezing the first’s hand gently before he went. Sometimes there’s a kiss on the cheek, on the temple, on the lips.

“I miss you,” the first would say before he also headed in to start his day.

“I miss you too,” Sadie said one day, dropping down onto the forest floor and shaking herself out. She hadn’t bathed yet, the creek still too cold for safe use other than drinking and washing her hands. Her clothes were a whole new level of disgusting, covered in dirt, and blood, and god knows what else. She was tempted to break into a school and use their locker rooms to shower in, and maybe make use of the cafeteria. If nothing else, she could hide out in a warm classroom for the weekend and not freeze overnight.

“Who’s there?” a voice called out. It didn’t belong to the first man.

Her training told her to wait until they came for her, and rip out their throats. She ran, breathing heavy as she went before she slid home into her thicket. No one pursued her.

She didn’t return for the next few days, instead working on finding a better place to stay than her thicket. She found a suitable cave, empty and quiet, near the creek and close to a family of rabbits that didn’t seem to notice her or care. She holed up inside, sleeping in an uncomfortable ball on the hard packed ground.

When she returned to the Hale house, the pack was gone. She wandered around the yard, playing with her necklace as she brushed her hands over the flowers in the garden beside the front porch. They were soft under her fingers. She lost herself in the wildlife, feeling at home in the vegetable garden. Her pack was nomadic, moving amongst the wilderness. They had never stayed in a forest for more than a week in the 15 years she’d been with them. They made peace with other packs, forming alliances and mate bonds.

“Who the hell are you?” the voice from days before snarled, lifting Sadie up off the ground and throwing her into a tree. He pressed himself against her, curls bouncing as his face shifted, his eyes taking on the supernatural yellow of a Beta. Sadie snarled in return, her own face shifting and her eyes taking on the red of an Alpha.

Her blood pounded in her ears, her heartbeat racing as she struggled against him.

“GET OFF HER, ISAAC LAHEY!” the man from the back porch yelled. “LET HER GO RIGHT NOW!”

Isaac let up, stumbling back enough for Sadie to slide away and run, booking it through the forest away from the Hale pack.

“What was that about, Stiles?”

“She’s my daughter, Isaac! That’s Sadie! Didn’t you see it? That was my daughter!”

-&-

Sadie tucked herself into the corner of the cave, playing back that man, Stiles’ words over and over. _She’s my daughter, Isaac! That’s Sadie!_

That voice.

His scent.

Was he really her father?

It started to rain, and while normally Sadie would take advantage of the free shower, she couldn’t bring herself to move from the spot. She tucked her chin into her chest and closed her eyes.

_You’re going to have to be really brave, okay? Can you do that for Daddy?_

She didn’t want to cry, she didn’t. She hated crying. It had been drilled into her head that crying was just another sign of weakness that she couldn’t afford to show.

_Don’t forget me, Sadie. Please, just, don’t forget me._

She’d forgotten him. Only the barest traces of her memories of her father were left, mostly his smell. He had a very distinctive smell, of cinnamon and sugar, spices that tickled your nose, one that had stuck around for 15 years.

She’d forgotten him, and she’d found her way back to him. Was he going to accept her now? Would he still love her?

God, she hoped so.

-&-

She found her way back to the Hale house the next morning, hiding in the shadows of the forest while the man sipped at his coffee on the back deck. She could see the resemblances between herself and him; the same color eyes, the same upturned nose, the same exaggerated Cupid ’s bow mouth, the same freckles and moles dotting their skin.

“You don’t have to be scared,” he called out. “It’s just me here right now.”

Sadie stepped into the light, taking small baby steps towards the back deck. The man, Stiles tracked her with his eyes but made no move to intercept her, only sipped his coffee. She joined him, sinking onto the step below his. They sat in silence, neither saying anything for a long time.

“Who are you?” Sadie finally asked. “I mean, I think I know. You smell so familiar, and I heard you call me your daughter yesterday. I just, I don’t get it.”

“When you were two-years-old, you got very sick,” Stiles said. “I looked everywhere I could to find a cure to make you better, but I found nothing. I had to give you up so you could be healthy again. And the moment I let you out of my sight, I wanted to find you and bring you home, but the pack couldn’t pick up your scent. The pack that took you had vanished.”

“They told me they’d found me wandering in the woods alone,” Sadie mumbled. “They said my parents didn’t want me, that I had been abandoned, that I was lucky they found me before any hunters had.”

Stiles hummed, finishing his coffee and standing.

“If you want,” he started. “You can stay here, Sadie. I know, I know you don’t know us and you probably have a pack waiting for you but, you can stay here. This is your home, too, if you want it.”

-&-

Sadie showered in the bathroom attached to the guest room, while Stiles set about changing the sheets on the bed and finding her new clothes. She listened to him bustle about, watching the water at her feet tinge pink and brown. She couldn’t remember the last time she had showered, not properly. She’d showered about a week before in rain water dripping off someone’s drain pipe and that was just to get most of the blood from the deer they’d taken down off her mouth. This was much more preferable to that, anyway.

“When I run through the deep, dark forest long after this begun,” Sadie sang, scrubbing the shampoo through her hair. “Where the sun would set, trees were dead, and the rivers were none, and I hope for a trace to lead me back home from this place, but there was no sound there was only me and my disgrace.”

She didn’t remember much from the song; it was just something she remembered from a life before her pack.

Once she felt like a person again, clean and refreshed, she stepped out of the shower to find a pair of clothes sitting on the counter waiting for her. She tugged on the jeans, and pulled the t-shirt over her head, sighing at the soft cloth against her skin. She stared in the mirror, feeling like an imposter. The girl in the mirror was the girl who had been raised by her own parents, not by a pack that never found its own territory. The girl in the mirror stared back, eyes cold as they regarded her. She pulled her hair up away from her face into a loose ponytail, tickling her neck and back as she moved away. She stopped before leaving and taking her matchbox car from her discarded jeans and hiding it within her new pair’s pocket. Stiles was sitting on the bed when she exited, his head snapping up to meet her eyes.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“Yeah, a bit. Best shower I’ve had in ages, but the last actual shower I was in was in a girls’ locker room and that was last year.”

“That, that sounds awful,” Stiles admitted. She smiled a bit but turned away to examine the room. It was a typical guest room, she supposed, with a full-sized bed, bedside tables, a desk with a chair, and a dresser.

“It kind of was, but bathing in hot springs makes up for it. You have not lived until you’ve taken a nice long soak in a hot spring.”

“You’ll have to find me a hot spring sometime, then,” Stiles laughed.

“I think there might be one in the Preserve,” Sadie answered. “Near the cave I was staying in, maybe. That seems like a good spot for a hot spring.”

“You’ve been staying in a cave,” Stiles echoed in deadpan.

“It’s a pretty nice cave. There’s no bats, no wildlife, it’s right next to a little stream, there’s a family of bunnies nearby. As far as caves go, it’s not so bad. I’ve definitely stayed in worse.”

“You are able to rate the caves you stay in,” Stiles stated.

“Yeah? Why? Is that wrong?”

“No, no, not wrong. Just, the daughter I gave birth to knows what qualifies a good cave, and I let that happen,” Stiles said, hanging his head.

“You gave birth to me?” Sadie asked.

“Yeah, you have two dads, instead of one mom, one dad. I have a mutation that allows me to bare children, so I carried you,” Stiles explained. “Is that okay?”  

“Yeah, no, of course it’s okay. I mean, without you, I guess I wouldn’t exist. So, it’s cool,” Sadie said, patting Stiles’ shoulder awkwardly.

“Do you want something to eat?”

“Yeah, that’d be great, actually.”

“Okay! Great! Follow me,” Stiles said with a smile, and Sadie couldn’t help herself. She smiled back.

-&-

Sadie polished off three heaping omelets full of vegetables and meat that Stiles had made himself in record time, and sat back, satisfied. She had learned early on in her pack that if you didn’t eat quickly, you didn’t eat at all. She didn’t feel too much shame about having to wolf down her food, pardon the phrase.

“Wow, I’ve seen werewolves put away food before, but that was impressive,” Stiles commented, taking Sadie’s plate and rinsing it in the sink. “Do you want a grand tour of Casa De Hale?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” she answered. She followed him into the living room where he started on about how the house had been burnt down before she was born by a werewolf hunter, but her father had had it rebuilt while Stiles and Sadie were away, and now it served as a base for the pack, even if they all had their separate places.

He went on to explain the differences between their pack then, when Sadie was two, and now.

“When the pack first formed,” he said, showing her the mantel full of pictures. “It was just your father, Derek, and three betas, Isaac, Boyd, and Erica. But since then, it’s grown quite a bit. There are pups, and marriages. Your father and I got married, and most of your aunts and uncles got married, Isaac and Cora, Scott and Allison, my dad and Melissa- that’s Scott’s mom- Lydia found herself a husband, Boyd is getting married in a couple of months.”

Sadie picked up a picture of Stiles and a man with dark hair laughing, a chubby toddler on Stiles’ hip glaring at the camera.

“Plus there’s the pups,” Stiles added. “Isaac and Cora are expecting their second, and Scott and Allison’s 8-year-old, who is wilder than even you used to be, and Lydia had a little half-banshee baby about two years ago, right around the same time Cora had Colbie.”

“Who’s this?” Sadie asked, pointing at the toddler on Stiles’ hip. He looked just like the dark haired man in the photo, which Sadie was figuring was her father, Stiles’ husband.  

“That’s Kai, your brother,” Stiles said slowly. “He’s human, like me.”

“Oh, okay.”

“I just want you to know, we weren’t replacing you.”

“No, I know. It’s okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

Besides, the little boy in the photo couldn’t be that much older now. They had waited years to have a kid, Sadie reasoned. They hadn’t just replaced her the moment she left. They loved her, they cared about her. They wouldn’t have given her up without a good reason, she told herself.

“I missed you, kid,” Stiles mumbled, and without warning pulled her into a tight hug. She held back the startled yelp and buried into him. “I missed you so fucking much.”

The door slammed open and a boy not much younger than Sadie ran in, throwing his bag onto the floor.

“Da-” he started and stopped, pulling up short with a bewildered expression on his face. “Dad?”

Stiles stepped back, looking between Sadie and the boy as they stared at one another. The boy couldn’t have been any more than 3 years younger than her, probably about 14. Stiles would’ve had to have gotten pregnant with him, she calculated, mere months after Sadie had joined her pack.

He lied.

He hadn’t missed her at all.

He replaced her as soon as he could.

This was her replacement, and he stunk of Stiles.

A growl ripped out of Sadie, and she felt her face shift, fangs descending and claws replacing her blunt nails. She felt all the power of an Alpha burst inside her, her eyes burning a brilliant red as she stared at her brother.

“Sadie!” Stiles snapped.

Sadie snapped her jaws at Stiles and stormed out; slamming the door closed behind her and ran into the forest, begging herself not to cry as she went.  

-&-

She sat against the wall of the cave, watching the forest tiredly. She’d circled the cave a couple of times before settling into it, trying to throw off her scent in case someone came looking for her. Tears fell freely, and she didn’t even bother to wipe them away. It would just be futile, and who was here to see her cry anyway?

She felt ridiculous.

“You’re a pathetic excuse for an Alpha, crying over a family that you never knew,” she scolded herself, her voice echoing in the empty space.

“I don’t think that makes you pathetic,” an unfamiliar voice rumbled from the entrance. Her years of training told her to lunge first and ask questions later, have him on his back before he could make a move, but she was so tired, and just wanted to be left alone.

“Go away,” she mumbled, tucking her head underneath her arms.

“I will, I just want to talk, if that’s okay.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are,” she explained, staring at the Alpha before her. She could feel his authority, and wanted to roll over to show her belly. “If you were my Alpha before, or-”

“I was your Alpha, but I’m also your father. Your other father,” he amended, coming to join her against the cave wall. “But you seem to be your own Alpha now. Mind if I ask how that happened?”

“My Alpha tried to claim me, tried to mate me without consent, and he didn’t take no for an answer. So, I killed him.”

She said it lightly, like it didn’t matter, but she had actually cared about Perses at one time. She was his advisor, his second opinion, other than Tommy who was rarely around anymore. She had been raised to be his second, and she had killed the closest thing she had had to a friend.

“That sounds awful, I’m sorry,” Derek said.

“It doesn’t matter. What did you want to talk about?”

“Why’d you run away? Stiles tells me that you were learning about the pack, and Kai came in an-”

He trailed off as their eyes met, both glowing red, hers from the name and his from the challenge.

“Kai,” she growled, shaking her head angrily.

“Sadie?”

“How could you replace me? I don’t remember a lot from before, but I remember how well I was treated, how loved I felt. I remember being sung to at night when I couldn’t sleep, and I remember hugs and kisses, and I remember just feeling like everything was fine. And then, then you give me away. You just hand me off to some stranger, and you replace me the minute I’m out the door with some human brat. I just don’t get it. How could you do it? Did you forget that you ever had me? Did I matter that little? Was it an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing? Because I may have forgotten what you looked like, and what you sounded like, but I remembered how much I _loved_ you, all of you. And I come back to see that I was replaced!”

Derek looked guiltily down at his hands.

“It wasn’t anything like that, Sadie. We never tried to replace you, never. It’s just that, your father and I, when we’re together, we forget.”

“You _forget_.”

“We have this, uhh, inability to remember a condom, and uhh, Kai was an accident. Not one we regret, or wish never happened, but he did happen accidentally. Actually,” Derek said with a quiet laugh. “You were an accident, too. Although, that was more out of ignorance of your father’s condition than anything heat of the moment.”

“This is awkward. Please, stop.”

“My point is that we weren’t replacing you with anyone, and we had never forgotten you. We love you, we could never forget you. Just, will you come home? You can meet the pack you were born to, and maybe you could try to get along with Kai. Your father is going out of his mind with worry, and we just want you to come home.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said after a minute of silence. “I guess I could try.”

-&-

Meeting the pack was easy, considering she’d met many packs in her own pack’s travels. She knew protocol, how you were supposed to greet the Alpha first, and then the Head Beta, if the Alpha was without a mate, how you were supposed to ask the Alpha for permission to stay within their territory. She studied them with Tommy before he disappeared, and she knew them by heart. However, this pack knew of no such protocol, she realized as she was introduced to whoever happened to be within the Hale house.

She was introduced first to her aunt, Cora, Derek’s sister, and her husband, Isaac. They had a quiet little boy named Colbie, and Sadie could hear the extra heartbeat inside Cora’s stomach. They hugged her, one at a time, and Sadie tried not to whine because they smelled like pack just as much as Stiles had.

“They were your favorite aunt and uncle,” Stiles explained as the couple took Colbie into the living room to play in the corner designated for toys, leaving Stiles and Sadie in the entry way. “Cora knew you since you were born, first blood relation to hold you, besides me. It was adorable, since you looked so much like the Hales when you were first born. I’ve seen pictures of Talia and Laura, and you looked like the spitting image of them. You grew to look like a Stilinski, though.”

“And Isaac?” Sadie asked, watching Colbie tug on his father’s dirty blonde curls. Colbie looked just like his mother, like a Hale with thick, dark hair and slender features.

“Isaac used to teach you about the ocean when he watched you.”

“He’s a marine biologist,” Sadie said.

“Ye-yeah. You remember that?”

“I have flashes of memory. Driving a car along someone’s arm, someone singing to me sleep, coloring with Isaac, a redhead handing me a stuffed wolf,” Sadie explained. “I remember the last thing you said to me, too, before I fell asleep with White-Paw.”

“You do?”

“Mhm,” she said. “You asked me to be really brave, and you asked me to never forget you. I didn’t; well, I did for the most part.” She shrugged. “But it was your scent that brought me home. I followed it through the forest, and back here.”

Stiles tried discreetly wipe away his tears from underneath his glasses.

“Who’s White-Paw?” he asked.

“Oh, he’s this wolf that Perses rescued. He died a few years after they took me in, but he was my best friend those couple of years. He slept in the pile with me, and he protected me like I was his own pup. Which was nice, since no one else acted like I belonged to them.”

Stiles didn’t ask any more questions after that.

Sadie met Scott, Allison, their little girl Victoria, Lydia, her husband Colin and their son Noah, and Peter as a group. Lydia turned out to be the woman she remembered buying her a stuffed wolf, a toy she’d named Puppy apparently that Stiles had thrown out years before out of sheer grief.

It wasn’t until the next day, after the deepest sleep she’d had in her life in a cloud-like bed, that she met the rest of the pack. The Sheriff and his wife, Melissa found their way in just after breakfast and Sadie experienced the tightest hug she’d ever known. The Sheriff sniffled into her hair.

“You look so much like Claudia,” he confessed and broke out of the hug, disappearing into another room. Boyd, she assumed, and his fiancé said their hellos and joined the rest of the pack in the kitchen for a meeting while Kai watched after the babies in the living room. Sadie tugged on Stiles’ shirt sleeve desperately.

“What’s up, M- Sadie?”

“I know I probably don’t have to ask, but is it okay if I go get some air? Take a walk? Too many people make me nervous, itchy almost.”

“Yeah, sure. Do you want someone to go with you?”

“No, it’s okay. I can find my way. Thank you,” she said politely, slipping into the backyard and then the forest. It enveloped her and calmed the raging anxieties in her head.

She wasn’t the same little girl this pack knew. She was raised to be a killer, trained since she was three to take out the enemy. She was taught every weakness in the human body and a werewolf’s, and how to pick out weaknesses in a particularly skilled opponent. She was taught how to kill without remorse, how to feel victory while standing in the blood of the slain. The little girl they knew was apparently sweet, and cuddly, and had a bit of a temper, and liked cars, and coloring books.

That little girl was gone. She’d been thrown out with her personal affects. She no longer existed, and she wasn’t sure she could keep acting like she did.

-&-

To say she wasn’t the same girl was an understatement. She liked being in her beta form, liked that she felt free and powerful. In her pack, she could stay in it for days, weeks, and no one noticed, nor cared. In nomadic packs with human delegates, wolves often didn’t see civilization for months at a time. Sadie wasn’t sure she would know what to do at a store even if you put her in a crash course.

But she tried to be that girl, for her father. He looked at her like she hung the moon, and she wasn’t sure she ever wanted that to stop. She tried, staying out of the forest and remaining in her human form, not eating furry forest creatures when she grew hungry. She tried, and she thought that should get some credit in and of itself because it was _hard_.

It was hard being around a pack that you didn’t grow up with, and couldn’t figure out how to grow into. It was hard being herself around them, especially that Allison girl. She knew once upon time she trusted Allison, but she had been two then, and she didn’t know the Argent smell. Now, she knew that many werewolves, many of her pack had been taken down by the cruelty of hunters, and Allison belonged to the cruelest and most infamous hunter families.

She kept to herself, choosing to remain quiet rather than share her stories. It had been a talent of hers, telling stories and talking someone’s ear off. She could ramble on for hours, given the opportunity. She didn’t want to ramble on in front of these wolves, this pack. She chose the simpler path of just keeping her mouth shut.

Except with Stiles.

She felt safe, like this was where she was supposed to be, when she was with him. They’d sit on the porch every morning, Stiles with a cup of coffee and Sadie just enjoying the view, and they’d talk. She’d tell him about the girls in her pack that were like sisters, Hana and Sydney, and Meredith, and Tyanne. She told him about how they would go for hunts on the full moon, taking down a buck or two to bring back to camp while the men would train and let out some aggression. She told him about the forests she’d seen over the years, from the sparse woods outside of cities to the huge redwood forests in California. She told him about crossing the Great Plains with pups hanging off her back, chewing happily on her fingers and ear. And in turn, he told her anecdotes from when his best friend first was changed, and the pack wasn’t even a pack, and he told her about her as a pup.

The morning before the full moon found Sadie on the porch before Stiles, the anticipation of the full moon rushing through her nervous system. She wondered if Hana’s surrogate had had their pup yet, wondered how the pack was doing without their Alpha. She wondered if maybe she should find them, try and lead them like a good Alpha should.

She had made a pretty shitty Head Beta, but the power from her new status felt right, felt natural. Had she been born with the potential to be an Alpha? She knew she was the child of an Alpha, but that didn’t always mean you were Alpha material. Judging by the stories Stiles had shared, Derek hadn’t been a brilliant leader in the beginning, and probably hadn’t been meant for the power, and he had been born to Talia Hale, the matriarch Alpha that many packs revered. They spoke of the loss of a great wolf. Talia Hale was her grandmother.

“Are you excited for tonight?” Stiles asked, plopping onto their step without much grace, full cup of coffee balanced in one hand. “First full moon with your pack?”

“My pack,” Sadie echoed. She liked it, but it didn’t feel right. “I abandoned my pack out of panic. I left them defenseless, without a leader or Head Beta. I have no pack. I don’t deserve a pack.”

“You have us.”

She shook her head.

“Just because I am your child does not mean I belong in your pack. Your pack is so chaotic, and so innocent.”

“Innocent,” he snorted. “There’s nothing innocent about this pack.”

“There’s nothing innocent about me, either,” she reminded him. “My whole existence was centered on killing for Perses, and in the end, Perses was the one I killed. My pack is somewhere out there, without an Alpha, without a Head Beta, with connections but no home. I was wrong to flee, and I’m wrong to stay here.”

“Sadie, this is your home. This is where you belong. You were born to this pack, and you will always have a place here.”

“Place here or not, I shouldn’t stay.”

“Please don’t. I just got you back,” Stiles begged, setting down his mug and clasping one of Sadie’s hands in both of his. “Please. I beg of you, Sadie. Don’t break your old man’s heart by leaving.”

-&-

The day passed, Stiles watching Sadie very closely for signs of fleeing, and Sadie was standing on the back porch surrounded by the Hale pack. They stretched and bounced in place, which Sadie kicked off her shoes and removed the unnecessary layers of clothing. In her pack, they always started off in underclothes and progressively lost the rest of their clothes. They always had to send their human delegates to buy new clothes every month.

“Are you ready?” Stiles asked, resting his hand comfortingly on her shoulder.

“Yeah, I’ve done this hundreds of times,” she answered.

“This is different, though. It’s your first full moon as an Alpha, and with a different pack,” Derek reminded her, stripped down to just his gym shorts.

“It feels right,” Sadie said. “Natural. Like, I was always meant for this. Like, my wolf has been waiting to become an Alpha my entire life. I don’t know, it just feels like this is what I was always meant for.”

“You might have been,” Cora said from near the steps. She was wearing a sports bra and a pair of running shorts, her baby bump barely noticeable between her hips.

“She’s right, though. Your aunt, Laura used to say that when she became Alpha was the best, most fulfilling moment of her life. I mean, it was also a really bad moment, since our entire family had just died, but Laura felt like she’d finally grown into herself.”

“That’s exactly what it feels like,” Sadie agreed, rubbing her arm as she dropped her t-shirt onto the railing, standing in just a bra and shorts like Cora. “When do we go? I’m ready to go!”

Derek and some surrounding pack members chuckled while Sadie bounced on her toes, nervous energy cresting in her gut.

“No, seriously, I just want to go. Let’s go.”

“Everyone ready?” Derek asked. The pack chorused their approval and Derek leaned over to kiss Stiles firmly. “Don’t wait up.”

“You know I will. Keep them safe.”

“You know I will,” Derek parroted with a grin, slipping away to the yard. “Okay, you know the routine. Try and get back to the house before sunrise.”

“You be careful out there, Sades,” Stiles said, catching Sadie’s arm as she went to follow the Alpha. “I know it’s not your first time running, but you’re still my little girl and I still want you to be careful. Don’t get hurt, and if you lose the pack, you come right back here, okay?”

“I know, I can handle myself.”

“Just promise me, Sadie.”

“Okay,” she said, holding Stiles’ hand with a small smile. “I promise I’ll be safe.”

She followed the pack off the steps and into the yard. The moon was full and high in the sky, taunting the wolf pacing just beneath Sadie’s surface. She rolled her shoulders back and cracked her neck from side to side, letting the shift take over her features. It came easy, like breathing.

“Are you ready?” Isaac asked, one hand clasped with Cora’s.

“Yeah, I need this. I’ve got so much pent up energy,” Sadie answered. He grinned, and she grinned back.

Derek took off first, and the pack followed, crowing and howling as they followed their Alpha. Sadie pushed herself, her bare feet meeting the forest floor, but she knew this wasn’t what her wolf wanted. She could feel her whine, contained inside Sadie’s chest. She wanted more, and Sadie agreed. She howled and let the rest of the change take her over, her entire body shifting, compacting as her Alpha form took over. Black fur sprouted over her skin and her hands turned into paws. She fell onto all fours with a growl, her jaw snapping experimentally and her tongue sneaking out to lick her chops.

“Whoa, dude,” Isaac laughed, pulling up short beside Sadie. She brushed up against his leg, coming up to his waist in her new form. “Hey Sades.”

Sadie circled his legs, around and between before yipping at him and bounding away.

“So, your daughter is a wolf,” Cora said to Derek, calling out over the pack. “Just like Mom used to be.”

The pack tumbled to a stop, crashing into themselves and each other as Derek circled back around. Sadie jumped against him, paws against his chest as she licked his chin. He carded a clawed hand through Sadie’s fur.

“You are beautiful, just like Talia. She would be proud of you,” Derek muttered, as Sadie licked his chin again before bounding away, barking at the moon through the trees. She looked back at the pack before tossing her head towards the forest.      

 This form, her full Alpha form fit her perfectly. It was so natural, she wasn’t sure she wanted anything else. Her senses, if possible, were even sharper, more focused than before. She felt free, free of social obligations, and of pack priorities. This was true freedom, and she was in love with it. She loved the feeling of her tail swishing behind her, the ground beneath her paws, the warmth from her fur surrounding her.

She could live like this forever, in this form, without any ties. She could become an Omega if she really wanted. She’d spent years listening to Perses talk shit about Omegas, calling them useless and worthless and how they were the lowest of the low and couldn’t be called werewolves in the first place. But now, she couldn’t see how he could possibly right. She could be without a pack, live on her own. She didn’t care that wolves were social creatures, searching for a pack and trying to find a place to fit in. She didn’t want that. She liked this solitude.

She bounded away from the pack, slipping into a thicket and waiting for them to pass before she exited and ran in the opposite direction. She could be alone; she could be an Alpha without a pack.

-&-

She didn’t turn back into her human form in the morning. She didn’t return to the Hale house. Instead, she slept in her cave in her wolf form, curled up as she snoozed. She spent her days chasing down deer and playing with a fox family, and her nights in her cave alone. No one came looking for her, and for a week, Sadie didn’t go looking for them.

On the seventh night, she trotted back to the edge of the clearing and lay on the ground, watching the pack interact. The wolves played, roughhousing in the backyard, tossing each other around with playful yips. Kai tried to keep up, but every advance had him flat on his back with a grimace. Sadie cocked her head, listening to Kai’s curses every time.

She felt bad, watching her brother be beaten again and again until he sat out. Stiles pat Kai’s shoulder comfortingly, mumbling encouragements.

“You’re not weak,” Stiles said. “Human is not a synonym for weak.”

“I’m useless, Dad,” Kai replied. Sadie whined, burying her nose underneath her paws. She had one white paw, the rest of her fur black and grey, like White-Paw when she was young. Her fur was matted, filthy from running in the woods without a bath but she wasn’t brave enough to risk the creek, and she hadn’t found a hot spring in the Preserve yet.

“No, you’re not. You have your own special talents, your own magic that makes you useful. You will never be useless,” Stiles said, wrapping Kai in a hug.

Sadie waited, watching as the pack tired and stumbled to their own cars or back inside to rest. Stiles left Kai on the back porch, telling him not to stay out too much longer. She trotted to Kai’s side and laid against him on the step, licking his hand as he moved to pet her absently.

She wanted to tell him all about the years she’d spent feeling alone, feeling like she didn’t quite belong in her skin. She wanted to comfort him, and it confused her. She didn’t even know this kid, didn’t like him. He was her replacement, and she shouldn’t feel sorry for him. She shouldn’t want to nuzzle into his side and lick his cheeks until he smiled. But she did, and she couldn’t deny herself.

“Hey Sadie,” Kai muttered. “Pops told me you inherited our grandmother’s shifting, and he wasn’t kidding. As if I didn’t have enough of a complex, you have the rare ability to turn into a full wolf.”

Sadie whined and pulled at Kai’s hoodie sleeve with her teeth.

“You scared the hell out of Dad, though, by not coming home. Pops said you needed time to acquaint yourself with your Alpha form, but a week went by and Dad was worried you hated him or something. You must like it, though. I would too, being a full wolf with that much power. I can’t imagine turning back.”

“Kai?” Stiles called from the kitchen. Sadie jumped up, and ran. She heard Stiles ask who Kai was talking to, and Kai replying nobody as Sadie slunk back into the forest, ashamed.  

-&-

Sadie returned a few days later, waiting while she watched Kai spar with Isaac. She could see that Isaac was going easy on the young human, and he was still beating Kai singlehandedly. She grimaced as Isaac twisted Kai’s arm behind his back and forced him onto the ground. She watched, studying Kai’s moves compared to Isaac’s. She had been trained for this, had been taught how to analyze someone’s strengths and their weaknesses. Isaac was a good fighter, but he left himself open too often. Kai had the potential to be one as well, but he didn’t have enough faith in his actions. He didn’t feel confident in his ability, so he didn’t put everything into it.

Kai switched to spar with Allison, human but better at fighting that Isaac. She walked him through steps that were still too advanced for Kai’s skills, and she had Kai on the ground within a minute.

Sadie tried not to feel embarrassed for him.

The night passed and Kai collapsed on the bottom step, a bit worse for wear than when they started. Isaac, the last of the pack outside, pat Kai carefully on the shoulder, before heading inside to say goodbye to the pack and pick Colbie up from the pack’s daycare run by Stiles during training and Kai when Stiles was at work.

Sadie sighed, watching Kai’s inner turmoil at work. She knew that look. That was the look she got when she was being hard on herself. That was the look she got after a particular bad day of training, after being beaten by the lowest Beta in the pack. She walked slowly to join Kai on the steps, shifting with each step.

“Jesus, hi,” Kai stuttered out, looking at Sadie with wide eyes.

“You know,” she started, taking the hoodie he offered and shrugging it over her shoulders. She zipped it up and tugged it down over her legs, dropping onto the step with him. She forgot how weird humans were about nudity. “I hated you when we first met. You had the life I’d wished I’d had since I was old enough to know I was different from my pack. You got Dad and Pops, and you get to be human. You get to choose if you want to be like Dad, or if you want to join the pack like Pops. You get a choice, Kai. I hated you, but it was stupid and petty. And I’m sorry. We could both use some help. I could teach you a couple thing I know, about wolves that could help you not get your ass kicked every time. And you could teach me what it is to be a human.”

“You know,” he replied, ruffling a hand through his hair. “Dad cries every year on your birthday, and Pops does too, but only when he’s alone. I used to think they were too busy mourning you to even notice me, still do sometimes. I hated you for that, taking away their attention when you weren’t even here. You’re right, it is stupid, and we could teach each other some things. First though, you need to learn how to hug like a Stilinski.”

“What the fuck is a Stilinski?”

“You know, I haven’t really figured that out yet.”


End file.
